Biden and Trump go to the U.S. border

(Photo Credit: U.S. Border Patrol. May 29, 2019. Agents working in El Paso. El Paso, Texas).

President Biden and former President Trump visited border cities in Texas last Thursday as part of their respective presidential campaigns for 2024.

But the visits were very different in their purpose and effect.

Biden went to Brownsville. That section of the border is quiet and is quiet because Texas put up razor wire and virtually sealed it off. He met with a small number of border officials, almost none of whom were cheering him on.

This was Biden’s second visit the border in his whole career.

In recent weeks, Biden has visited East Palestine, Ohio to visit the site of a major train accident (that happened more than a year ago), continues to feign interest in Israel’s defense of their nation while pandering to the far-left by insisting Israel curtail their efforts, making dubious claims of strengthening the U.S. economy, and giving away millions of dollars of American taxpayer money to student loan recipients.

Most notably, Biden chose to ignore a House-passed bill to address the border, in favor a mostly Democrat-backed bill in the Senate in what can be seen as an empty gesture. One key aspect of the Senate bill would require a border closing if a threshold of “seven-day average of 5,000 or more…” is surpassed.

Critics rightly see this as becoming a de facto institutionalizing of 5,000 being allowed to cross before any action was necessary. A current or future president could claim the border is secure if the number is kept below 5,000 --- which is ludicrous.

Trump went to Eagle Pass, a much more active crossing point. His seriousness about border issues is not merely rhetorical or hypothetical.

He had an extensive record in his term of taking actions to reduce illegal crossings such as stay-in-Mexico, Title 42 (related to COVID), construction of miles of a border wall etc…

Biden, on the other hand, almost immediately upon taking office in 2021, rescinded almost all of the Trump executive orders and a flood ensued as word spread throughout Central America and distant lands that the border was essentially open. (Cartels also took action to facilitate the ventures).

Today, when migrants are detained, they are almost guaranteed a rubber stamp entry under a legal status.

For example, the president can parole people entering the country illegally for so-called humanitarian reasons pending a hearing that may be scheduled as many as 8 years down the road.

“Barack Obama paroled about 5,000 illegal aliens per year. Joe Biden is paroling close to a million per year, including the person who brutally murdered Laken Riley,” (a University of Georgia student killed, allegedly, by a Venezuelan migrant who had been arrested previously and released on an unrelated charge), said U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio). Why is such an effort needed now, but was not then?

This fact has no doubt contributed to the influx of migrants who see Biden’s actions as a clear invitation (and they are). His policies produced a “new monthly record of nearly 250,000” migrants in December 2023.

For three years Biden has effectively decimated Trump’s border policies, allowed millions of once-illegal migrants to stay anywhere in the country they want to go on their pinky promise they will show up in court years from now.

Yet now Biden says “it’s long past time to act.”  

Biden is not a serious person as illustrated by his policies, but also by his choice of advisors on what most people today see as a major problem.

“I’ve never had one conversation with the president or the vice president for that matter…that’s a problem,” said Raul Ortiz, the U.S. Border Patrol chief under President Biden until May 2023 during an interview March 3, 2024 on CBS News 60 Minutes.

Not speaking to the head of the federal organization pledged to defend the nation’s border speaks volumes.

It is obvious Biden not only does not care about this as a problem; he sees the constant flow as desirable.

Biden knows that eight years from now when many of the migrants go before judges they will rightfully be denied their bogus humanitarian asylum requests. Democrats at that time will scream how terrible it is to deport people who have lived here for eight years and they should be allowed to stay permanently.

Soon thereafter, those same people who originally arrived illegally, will become eligible for citizenship, and, Democrats hope, become Democrat voters.

Who else benefits from all-time record illegal migrant entry? Mexican and other cartels engaged drug sales and human trafficking.

As one migrant from El Salvador noted during the 60 Minutes segments, cartel members often kidnap them and hold them for ransom. The migrants do not fear the American soldiers. They fear the cartels.

One other significant border related issue that is being nudged off the center screen by the overwhelming migrant numbers, is the fentanyl epidemic that is being created by China and facilitated by cartels in Mexico. The flow of the drug is coming, at least in significant part, from the very people illegally crossing the borders today.

Additionally, the number of Chinese nationals, mostly military age males, illegally crossing the U.S. border continues to rise.

As reported by the New York Times, “more than 24,000 Chinese citizens have been apprehended crossing into the United States from Mexico in the past year (Fiscal Year 2023). That is more than in the preceding 10 years combined, according to government data.”

It is a rare occurrence that voters can judge presidential candidates on a single issue so clearly. Biden has obviously expanded the misery and cost to American citizens by inept and ill-considered policies, and Trump fundamentally curtailed illegal immigrations.

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James Hutton is a former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army. Follow him on X @jehutton.